Hey Alex. Fair question.

My question: Would it be useful for the community to clarify the characteristics that distinguish one End Site from another? For example, is it a physical location/premises, legal relationship, routing, operational control, or a combination of these, so LIRs and the RIPE NCC have a more consistent basis for documenting IPv6 assignments?

A very simple example would be an enterprise, where one organization may operate branches, campuses, datacenter presence, security-separated environments, and different routing domains. The legal entity, physical site, operational site, and routing site may not always be the same thing. Is the boundary physical premises, or can it also be a distinct routing and administrative separation?

On Thu, Jul 2, 2026 at 3:10 PM Alex Le Heux <alexlh@funk.org> wrote:

> On Jul 2, 2026, at 20:59, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
>
>> Can you give the list some concrete examples of these deployment
>> models that cause tension with the current end-site definition and/or
>> interpretation?
>
> PD gone wild
>
> e.g. if <broadband provider> PDs me a /56 and i split it out to
> neighbors

Ok, I'll bite :)

Our current end-site definition:

2.9. End Site
An End Site is defined as the location of an End User (subscriber) who has a business or legal relationship (same or associated entities) with a service provider that involves:-

- that service provider assigning address space to the End User location
- that service provider providing transit service for the End User location to other sites
- that service provider carrying the End User's location traffic
- that service provider advertising an aggregate prefix route that contains the End User's location assignment

Even if the deployment model that you describe happens, I think it would be pretty rare:

You could be considered a service provider if we stretch the concept a little bit. And if we apply the definition to that, we get:

- You could argue that you're assigning address space to your neighbors, although it would be a sub-assignment, which is problematic.
- You are providing transit to your neighbors
- You are carrying your neighbors' location traffic

So far so good, but:

- There has to be a legal or business relationship between you and your neighbors. I'm not sure if "we're all buddies here" would qualify as such.
- Given that your ISP PDs you the /56 I would say there is no BGP or anything like that involved, so you would not be advertising an aggregate prefix.

So I would argue that under the current definition and the scenario you describe, your neighbors would not qualify as end-sites.

And they shouldn't until you get your act together and set up a proper service provider with ASN, peering, LIR account, etc :)

So I don't see much tension here.

Cheers,

Alex
Wearing his Random Internet Nerd hat
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